Some of the biggest companies in the world received money from Bank of New York accounts at the center of a massive $10 billion Russian mob money-laundering probe.

Investigators have discovered that General Electric, Sony, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola were among hundreds of companies wired money from accounts linked to a company called Benex.

Probers believe the wire transfers were payments from Russian clients diverted through the Benex accounts at BNY so that the Russian companies could avoid paying taxes and customs’ duties in their homeland.

While the Russian companies may be in trouble with the Moscow tax police, there is no suggestion that any of the companies that received the funds did anything wrong, authorities said.

A spokesman for GE said the company was reviewing its Russian customers’ payment practices to ensure they were legit. The other companies declined to comment.

The revelation highlights one of the biggest problems facing investigators probing the thousands of transactions and billions of dollars that flowed through the accounts.

Even though investigators believe a large portion of the money moving through the accounts was legitimate, sorting through thousands of transfer records and trying to trace each one back to its source is difficult, they said.

If Russian companies were cycling money through the accounts to keep from paying taxes – or Russian businessmen were using them to get their money out of a collapsing economy – no U.S. laws would appear to have been broken.

But if any of the money came from crimes like kidnapping or prostitution, then it could be a case of money laundering.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that $300,000 that went through the BNY accounts was ransom money for a Russian kidnapping – a revelation that could be key to an eventual money-laundering case.

BNY has been cooperating with the probe and has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The Benex accounts, which investigators believe are linked to the Russian mob, were allegedly controlled by Russian native Peter Berlin, the husband of BNY Vice President Lucy Edwards.

Edwards has been fired from the bank for alleged gross misconduct. Both she and Berlin deny any wrongdoing.